Sunday, July 31, 2005
Imaginary Return
(click through for comments)
Posted by jrice @ 02:56 PM EST [Link]
Friday, July 29, 2005
Friday in Images
Posted by jrice @ 09:57 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Competition
I find this article (via BoingBoing) about competition between used books and new books bought online to be revealing. Often, initial reactions to new media developments includes focusing on "competition." This will destroy that, as the popular Hugo saying goes. We see this in P2P (file sharing hurts music sales), allowing texts to be read for free even though there exists a hard copy for sale (like with Cory Doctorow's work), movie downloading (it’s hurting the movie industry), morality (or you have morality by reading, or the new video games destroy your morality) and even pedagogy (new media is hurting writing), etc. The assumption is that what worked in one medium will work the same in another. What we experienced in one situation is what we will experience in another.
What often occurs, however, is that whatever the process is that we've identified, (buying products or even teaching writing), the move to a new environment (like the Web) alters our expectations. We expect music sales to drop if folks can download songs for free. We expect the new book market to be hurt by the increased sales and access to used books. But that doesn't happen. Instead, new types of relationships emerge - music sales still are alive and well/people still download music. In fact, people often do both.
It is that sense of "both" which I am interested in; interested because a notion of "both" is a network idea (it recognizes the complex moves and responses we make to new situations). The idea of a “both” also acts as a disruption of our expectations that all knowledge can be reduced to binary positions. The best example in popular culture/consumerism, which I think Steven Johnson has pointed out already, is DVD/video sales. That you went to the theater to see X often doesn't mean that you won't rent (or buy) X on DVD. I go to the store to rent a movie or TV show and am amazed that certain shows, shows easily seen on basic cable or network TV, are for sale or for rental. Why rent Arrested Development? It's on Sunday on Fox. But people do rent it. More than once. Why buy The Simpsons when you can tape it off your TV? People do buy it. They engage with the feeling of "both."
There are, of course, pedagogical issues directly related to this sense of both. The most obvious is the fetish of “classic” text over “popular culture” (the idea you can’t have both) or alphabetic vs other kinds of texts. And, of course, the question of what a student writes about in a given first year course (always asked to ignore the "both" in favor of the absolute stance).
Posted by jrice @ 11:03 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Dragonmead
Dragonmead is tucked away off of 696 in Warren. If you drive down the service drive, you'll see it. Not much to look at on the outside; inside it's all beer. Good beer. Plenty to choose from. I don't know if I've seen a brew pub w/this much of its own.
The three of us had samplers first. I stuck to mostly Belgian style. Excellent. The German Wheat: excellent. Except for the Pale Ale, the two American styles weren't as good. Better than what we have in Ferndale, though. Doesn't matter; I wish this place was closer to home. Afterwards, we went for full pints. Back to the Trippel. Damn good. Brought home a growler of Bronze Griffin Belgian Ale. Sorry CBD. I should have taken you here. Next time I'll bring my camera. But for now, I think I've hit the good brew pubs in the metro area (except for Bo's in Pontiac). Dragonmead was my last one. Now I need to hit the West side of Michigan.
Posted by jrice @ 07:05 PM EST [Link]
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Talking Shops
David Clements Talking Shops: Detroit Commercial Folk Art is a nice collection of the wonderful art that adorns many of the city's walls and storefronts. These paintings are markings of Detroit's imaginary (figures, places, ideas, pride, consumerism, etc.). Engaging with them (as pedestrian, photographer, gawker, tourist) is itself, too, the imaginary gesture. The engagement, the event/encounter, generates the meaning.
This book serves, then, as a sort of tour guide of the imaginary, a street map to find and locate those signs of place which allude us daily (the presence of place that you have to pay attention to as you walk or drive by). I read through the pictures and I want to go to the site, to see if the art is still there. Or, like the "We The People Press" painting on an abandoned building towards the end of Jefferson, I already know that the artwork is long gone; I remember being on that street but a week or so ago, and I remember seeing only a white wall. Some of this is dependent on regret (for so long I meant to take a picture of the “gourmet food” logo on a party store on Livernois. I waited too long. The logo has been painted over). Some of this activity is dependent on romanticism (oh, how lovely). Some on invention (what do I make of these signs/paintings?).
Two spots draw my immediate attention: The Blacktronic Science mural at Mack and Drexel and the rich Eastside Check Cashing mural at E. McNichols. I don't want to know yet that these murals are gone. I want to go there and see if they are gone and what, if anything, has taken their place. That action is a part of the city-imaginary rhetoric vital to digital culture: engagement.
Posted by jrice @ 10:53 AM EST [Link]
Monday, July 25, 2005
Imaginary Maps
Wonderful stuff. I get inspired.
Click through to see notes (and thus the imaginary map).
Posted by jrice @ 10:08 PM EST [Link]
Etc
Thoughts to start the week:
What (and here is where composition studies doesn't get it) 19th and 20th century did to create media thinking - through the telegraph, Hollywood, Burroughs, avant-garde practices, Engelbart's windows, TV, New York hip hop of the '70s, etc. is what gave rise to the kind of logic that could make word processing possible (cut and paste). The Web pushes that logic further - mostly in ways we aren't yet sure what to do with. We see some of it in weblogs (even in so-called journals), but we see it in other approaches as well.
Hmm. I smell rant. Better stop or just send this next time to the listserv.
Posted by jrice @ 01:38 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Cbd
Gotcha!
Posted by jrice @ 01:18 PM EST [Link]
Michigan Beer Fest
A few scenes:
Posted by jrice @ 09:32 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Fun With WordPress
I've decided (for now - we still have until Sept 6, right?) to do my Intermediate Writing course this Fall as a WordPress setup. It can be found (still rough) at http://englishweb.clas.wayne.edu/~jrice/3010/.
Even though I've been blogging since (almost) its inception, I've yet to consider using a blog as a course website. But the point has become obvious to most of us: the static webpage is vanishing (this after I just published an article on a new type of webpage pedagogy I invented!). We need new methods of organizing webspace. The blog is one such method (but not the only one). It has its limitations. But it might prove more dynamic as a space that can be written to throughout the semester by all, not just me.
Posted by jrice @ 10:58 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Beer
Money reports on Ratebeer.com's 50 best beers. Four of my favorites are in the top ten, Bell's (Michigan's and the country's best), Three Floyds (so close to Michigan, so far away; not one place stocks it), Stone (why oh why don't they ship to Michigan), and Dogfish (pure hops). The one beer I really want is Pizza Port, which I don't know if you can even get outside of Solana Beach, or the pizza place it's brewed at. America is in the lead when it comes to micros. Belgium is in the lead for heaven. America next. One beer missing from the list I love, Fish Tale. Another, Duchess. But then again, I also dig the low level Canadian take on Belgian style, Unibroue's Trois Pistoles.
In the meantime, we've got the Michigan Summer Beer Fest on the schedule for Saturday. All Michigan beer, all day. You can't go wrong with that.
Posted by jrice @ 07:57 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Larry
Lots of anger of Larry Brown these past two days. "I got rich from writing crappy books" Mitch Albom basically says: seeya. But I'll miss Larry. Forget for a moment that he's a fellow member of the Tribe. He took the Pistons two years in a row to the finals when they couldn't get there without him. And Flip or no Flip, they will not go back next year without him. Watch Saunders have to play Darko serious minutes (in place of Dice?). That should be fun. A seven footer who can't rebound, block, shoot, or even run. Wow.
Yeah, Brown's got the jimmy legs - always moving on. But was he really looking to get out? Or did ESPN merely ask the question enough ("Larry, are you going to Cleveland or not!") that we just assume he was out the door? News is not news until the station makes it so.
Posted by jrice @ 06:01 PM EST [Link]
CCCC Themes That Never Made It
Posted by jrice @ 02:15 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Drupal
Since the last two universities I was at refused to install PHP and Mysql, I've never had the luck to play with goodies like Drupal. I got a great admin at Wayne to get things running this past week, so I've started to mess around a bit in the hopes of getting something going for me, as well as for grad students who pass through the practicum I teach.
But so far, I'm not getting out of Drupal what I want. I want more control over multiple blogs (it can't or I dont' see how these "blogs" function like the blogs we normally use) and ability to link to stand alone pages and such (not getting how yet) and having items only appear in one place and not on the main page as well (like a resource page you don't want on the main page). The template's style sheet can be manipulated, but some things can only be done through the fill in the blank interface.
I've skimmed through some sites using Drupal for courses (and I know about the C&W workshop that recently took place), but am I missing something about its dynamics? Probably. But what?
Posted by jrice @ 02:52 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, July 16, 2005
A KO
Doing some research this morning on a track which I've been listening to for awhile now, A KO's "Soul 69". A nice remix of - what doesn't sound like Sam and Dave but is their song - "Hold On, I'm Coming." I got the track off of a Blue Water compliation some time last year. Who is this, I kept asking. American? English? So as I'm doing some writing this morning on the mix and the question of what I am now calling "Ka-knowledge" (named after the line in The Beastie's "Sounds of Science" - the mix as knowledge as opposed to literate practices of mastery and expertise), I find A KO's Livejournal.
That is what Ka-knowledge is all about: the exploration of the link. The exploration. Not a definitive explication of that exploration.
So, A KO, if you find my links, let me know what the track listings are, eh? Nice stuff. Is this track a riff on Arethra Franklin's album Soul '69?
Posted by jrice @ 10:33 AM EST [Link]
Friday, July 15, 2005
The Yard Sale That's 792,000 Yards Long
I've always wanted to experience this yard sale. A massive sale stretching throughout several states, it looks like the ultimate experience. Years ago, I saw a short PBS documentary on the sale and quickly imagined what kinds of great junk I could get: old tools, cast iron pans, cheap toys, comics nobody wants, furniture, board games named after long forgotten TV shows. This is the stuff one's life is made of: fill up your garage with "stuff" and you have made it.
I love garage/yard sales. I love the idea of circulating junk. Unfortunately, I'm not the only one who likes these kinds of useless purchases; lots of folks do. Thus, the prices for crap can be quite high. In Micanopy (just down the road from Gainesville, where I used to live), Smiley's was notorious for jacking up the prices on what were once throwaway crap: McDonald's glasses, prizes from cereal boxes, little Happy Meals toys, sports giveaways. As I much as I desired this crap, I couldn't see myself paying 10 bucks for a glass that was once free.
The next best thing to the garage sale is the flea market. But as great as the flea market is, it doesn't have the social-ness of the garage sale - the sale that takes place in someone's home. Here you can imagine all this crap once sitting inside the house, being used, being looked at, or just being tossed aside as an idiotic purchase ("Why did I buy yet another basket?").
Flea markets were a Sunday ritual for me and my dad. He insisted we get up early (it gets hot quite early in Miami) and get there before everyone else. That usually meant we were there before the vendors. Of course, hot dogs and chili dogs can always be bought at 7:30 in the morning.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a nice little yard sale run. I got Kill Bill on DVD for two dollars, a buffet for twenty dollars (and the guy drove it to my house in his pick-up), and some tools for a few dollars more (now I got that level I needed a month ago). In Michigan, the yard sale season is limited; no one wants to go or stand out in the snow and sell/buy junk. So I keep my eyes peeled when I drive around on the week-ends ("should I follow that sign? how deep into that neighborhood is the sale?" "hmm...I don't see any 'big ticket' items....should I get out of the car?"). I guess I don't feel that I own enough junk yet. Or I feel I don't want to own enough junk. I can't resist a torn comic book that features some odd topic or that is named after a forgotten B-movie; I can’t resist another wrench; I’m still looking for something cheap to put a lot of my junk in (like a tool chest or cabinet).
And garage sales bring regret. Why didn’t I get that? Who cares if I really need it. I'm still kicking myself for not buying the five dollar wheelbarrow I saw two months ago.
Posted by jrice @ 04:16 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, July 14, 2005
We're back.
Will blog and rant soon....
Posted by jrice @ 07:50 PM EST [Link]
Friday, July 8, 2005
Blog Job Seekers
From that resource of dullness and everything non-intellectual, The Chronicle, a rant on why academic job seekers shouldn't blog:Worst of all, for professional academics, it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation.
